Boxing Day thief pillages Art City’s archives

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This article was published 26/12/2018 (2676 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A West Broadway non-profit that provides free art programming for inner-city youth discovered a break-and-enter Boxing Day had robbed it of thousands of dollars of digital equipment and irreplaceable data.

While most of what was stolen — including cameras and electronics — is replaceable, the thief also took a backup hard drive containing photographs of the children who’ve gone through the agency’s programs and the art they had made.

“We’re talking about years and years of digital archives that have tremendous value to us and very little value to the person who stole it. It has photographs of the kids, art projects, office documents,” Josh Ruth, managing director of Art City, said Wednesday.

Founded in 1998, Art City’s mandate is to make art programming available to everyone, regardless of their ability to pay for it.

Ruth said the agency’s alarm system went off shortly before 1 a.m. Wednesday.

Staff checked livestream security footage of the space at the time, and didn’t see anyone in the building, he said. The security system also reported the doors were locked, leading staff to think it was a false alarm.

However, upon arrival at the organization’s headquarters at 616 Broadway around 2:30 p.m., staff reported someone had removed a metal grating protecting one of the building’s windows and smashed their way inside.

Whoever carried out the crime only hit one room in the building (which happened to store all its valuable electronic equipment) and went through the only window that sits in a security camera blind spot, Ruth said.

“I don’t know if it was luck or if they knew what they were doing, but once they were in there they basically grabbed everything that wasn’t locked down. It’s speculation, obviously, but it’s possible someone knew where to find the valuables they were looking for,” he said.

Winnipeg Police Service spokesman Const. Jay Murray said police received report of the break-in Wednesday afternoon, and the investigation would be handled by the major crimes unit.

Ruth said what Art City is most interested in isn’t an arrest, but getting back the invaluable hard drive.

“We’re very sympathetic to the needs of the community and the incredible poverty that some of the people in West Broadway face. So this is really just a plea to get us back that backup system. We’d be willing to offer a cash reward, no questions asked,” he said.

When he spoke to the Free Press, Ruth said the agency had yet to fully review its security footage from the time of the break-in, but from what he could tell so far, the security cameras did not capture images of the perpetrator.

He added it’s hard to properly describe the sentimental value — both for the agency and the children and their families that go through its programming — some of the documents on the hard drive (a CalDigit T4 Thunderbolt 3 RAID HDD 4TB) have.

“We’re not out trying to see people get locked up. We just want that device back… We’re just hoping for any information that we can get that would help us figure out where it is and how we can get it,” Ruth said.

ryan.thorpe@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @rk_thorpe